IBM and Red Hat have announced the closing of a transaction which saw IBM acquire all shares of Red Hat the American multinational software company which provides open-source software products to the enterprise community.

The acquisition redefines the cloud market for business. Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud technologies are now paired with the unmatched scale and depth of IBM’s innovation and industry expertise, and sales leadership in more than 175 countries.

Based on open source technologies, such as Linux and Kubernetes, the platform will allow businesses to securely deploy, run and manage data and applications on-premises and on private and multiple public clouds.

“Businesses are starting the next chapter of their digital reinventions, modernizing infrastructure and moving mission-critical workloads across private clouds and multiple clouds from multiple vendors,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and CEO.

“They need open, flexible technology to manage these hybrid multicloud environments. And they need partners they can trust to manage and secure these systems.

“IBM and Red Hat are uniquely suited to meet these needs. As the leading hybrid cloud provider, we will help clients forge the technology foundations of their business for decades to come.”

“When we talk to customers, their challenges are clear: They need to move faster and differentiate through technology.

“They want to build more collaborative cultures, and they need solutions that give them the flexibility to build and deploy any app or workload, anywhere,” said Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO, Red Hat.

“We think open source has become the de facto standard in technology because it enables these solutions.

“Joining forces with IBM gives Red Hat the opportunity to bring more open source innovation to an even broader range of organizations and will enable us to scale to meet the need for hybrid cloud solutions that deliver true choice and agility.”